The Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, in the World War Part 8

going forward by leaps and bounds. Strong points, such as well-organized villages, manned by snipers and machine guns in some force, held the troops up until the German rear-guards were disposed of. Once they were cleaned up, however, the American advance, hampered only by hidden sharpshooters and machine guns in small strength, moved forward rapidly. It was reported, for instance, that one regimental headquarters was moved three times in one day to keep up with the lines.

Most of the time, regimental, and even brigade, headquarters were under artillery fire from the German big guns, and it was from this cause that the first Pennsylvania officer of the rank of lieutenant-colonel was killed, July 28th. He was Wallace W. Fetzer, of Milton, Pa., second in command of the 110th.

Regimental headquarters had been moved far forward and established in a brick house in a good state of preservation. The office machinery just was getting well into the swing again when a high explosive sh.e.l.l fell in the front yard and threw a geyser of earth over Colonel Kemp, who was at the door, and Lieutenant-Colonel Fetzer, who was sitting on the steps.

A moment later a second sh.e.l.l struck the building and killed three orderlies. This was good enough evidence for Colonel Kemp that his headquarters had been spotted by Boche airmen, for the artillery was registering too accurately to be done by chance, so he ordered a move.

Officers and men of the staff were packing up to move and Lieutenant Stewart M. Alexander, Altoona, Pa., the regimental intelligence officer, was finis.h.i.+ng questioning two captured Hun captains when a big high-explosive sh.e.l.l scored a direct hit on the building. Seventeen men in the house, including the two German captains, were killed outright.

Colonel Kemp and Lieutenant-Colonel Fetzer had left the building and were standing side by side in the yard. A piece of sh.e.l.l casing struck Colonel Fetzer, killing him, and a small piece struck Colonel Kemp a blow on the jaw, which left him speechless and suffering from sh.e.l.l-shock for some time.

Lieutenant Alexander, face to face with the two German officer prisoners, was blown clear out of the building into the middle of the roadway, but was uninjured, except for shock.

It was this almost uncanny facility of artillery fire for taking one man and leaving another of two close together, that led to the fancy on the part of soldiers that it was useless to try to evade the big sh.e.l.ls, because if "your number" was on one it would get you, no matter what you did, and if your number was not on it, it would pa.s.s harmlessly by.

Thousands of the men became absolute fatalists in this regard.

Major Edward Martin, of Waynesburg, Pa., took temporary command of the regiment and won high commendation by his work in the next few days.

It now became necessary to straighten the American line. The 109th had come up and was just behind the 110th. It had taken shelter for the night of July 28th in a wood just south of Fresne, and early on the morning of July 29th received orders to be on the south side of the Ourcq, two miles away, by noon of that day.

The men knew they were closely in touch with the enemy once more, but this time there was none of the nervousness before action that had marked their first entrance into battle. They had beaten back the Prussian Guard, the flower of the Crown Prince's army, once, and knew they could do it again.

Furthermore, there were many scores to settle. Every man felt he wanted to avenge the officers and comrades who had fallen in the earlier fighting, and it was a grimly-determined and relentless body of men that emerged from that wood in skirmish formation before dawn of July 29th.

Almost immediately parts of the line came into action, but it was about an hour after the beginning of "the day's work" that the first serious fighting took place. Company M, near the center of the 109th's long line, ran into a strong machine gun nest. The new men who had been brought into the company to fill the gaps that were left after the fighting on the Marne had been a.s.similated quickly and inoculated with the 109th's fighting spirit and desire for revenge.

Although the company had gone into its first action as the only one in the regiment with the full complement of six commissioned officers, it now was sadly short, for those bitter days below the Marne had worked havoc with the commissioned personnel as well as with the enlisted men.

Officers were becoming scarce all through the regiment. Lieutenant Fales was the only one of the original officers of the company left in service, so Lieutenant Edward B. Goward, of Philadelphia, had been sent by Colonel Brown from headquarters to take command of the company, with Lieutenant Fales second in command.

The company had to advance down a long hill, cross a small tributary of the Ourcq, which here was near its source, and go up another hill--all in the open. The Boche were intrenched along the edge of a wood at the top of this second hill, and they poured in a terrible fire as the company advanced.

Lieutenants Goward and Fales were leading the first platoons. The company was wild with eagerness and there was no holding them. Here was the first chance they had had since the Marne to square accounts with the unspeakable Hun, and they were in no humor to employ subtle tactics or use even ordinary care.

With queer gurgling sounds behind their gas masks--they would have been yells of fury without the masks in place--they swept forward. Lieutenant Goward ran straight into a stream of machine gun bullets. One struck him in the right shoulder and whirled him around. A second struck him in the left shoulder and twisted him further. As he crumpled up a stream of bullets struck him in the stomach. He fell dying.

Seeing him topple, Lieutenant Fales rushed toward him to see if he could be of service. He walked directly into the same fire and was mortally wounded. Goward managed to roll into a sh.e.l.l hole, where he died in a short time.

The men did not stop. Led only by their non-commissioned officers, they plunged straight into and over the machine gun nest directly in the face of its murderous fire which had torn gaps in their ranks, but could not stop them. They stamped out the German occupants with as little compunction as one steps on a spider. The men came out of the woods breathing hard and trembling from the reaction to their fury and exertions, but they turned over no prisoners.

The machine gun crews were dead to a man.

Goward and Fales had been especially popular with the men of the company, and their loss was felt keenly. Goward was distinctly of the student type, quiet, thoughtful, scholarly, doing his own thinking at all times. He had been noted for this characteristic when a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Fales, on the other hand, was of the das.h.i.+ng, athletic type, and the two, with their directly opposed natures, had worked together perfectly and quite captured the hearts of their men.

Both Goward and Fales are buried on the side of a little hill near Courmont, in the Commune of Cierges, Department of the Aisne, their graves marked by the customary wooden crosses, to which are attached their identification disks.

From then on, the rest of the day was a continuous, forward-moving battle for the regiment. Every mile was contested hotly by Hun rear-guard machine gunners, left behind to hara.s.s the advancing Americans and make their pursuit as costly as possible.

Lieutenant Herbert P. Hunt, of Philadelphia, son of a former lieutenant-colonel of the old First, leading Company A of the 109th in a charge, was struck in the left shoulder by a piece of sh.e.l.l and still was in hospital when the armistice ended hostilities.

The 109th reached Courmont and found it well organized by a small force of Germans, with snipers and machine guns in what remained of the houses, firing from windows and doors and housetops. They cleaned up the town in a workmanlike manner, and only a handful of prisoners went back to the cages in the rear.

It was in this fighting that Sergeant John H. Winthrop, of Bryn Mawr, performed the service for which he was cited officially by General Pers.h.i.+ng, winning the Distinguished Service Cross. The sergeant was killed in action a few weeks later.

He was a member of Company G, 109th Infantry. All its officers became incapacitated when the company was in action. Sergeant Winthrop took command. The official citation in his case read:

"For extraordinary heroism in action near the River Ourcq, northeast of Chateau-Thierry, France, July 30, 1918. Sergeant Winthrop took command of his company when all his officers were killed or wounded, and handled it with extreme courage, coolness and skill, under an intense artillery bombardment and machine gun fire, during an exceptionally difficult attack."

CHAPTER IX

THE CHURCH OF RONCHERES

Meanwhile, the 110th had been having a stirring part of the war all its own, in the taking of Roncheres. As was the case with every other town and village in the whole region, the Germans, without expecting or intending to hold the town, had taken every possible step to make the taking of it as costly as possible. With their characteristic disregard of every finer instinct, they had made the church, fronting an open square in the center of the town and commanding roads in four directions, the center of their resistance.

Every building, every wall, fence and tree, sheltered a machine gun or a sniper. Most of the enemy died where they stood. As was the case 99 times out of every 100, they fired until they dropped from bullets or thrust up their hands and bleated "Kamerad," like scared sheep, when our men got close enough to use the bayonet.

Some time before, however, the Pennsylvanians had undertaken to make prisoners of a German thus beseeching mercy, and it was only after several men had fallen from apparently mysterious fire that they discovered the squealing Hun, hands in air, had his foot on a lever controlling the fire of his machine gun. Thus, he a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of surrender in order to decoy our men within easier range of the gun he operated with his foot.

So it is small wonder that the men of the 110th went berserk in Roncheres and made few prisoners. They played the old-fas.h.i.+oned game of hide and seek, in which the men in khaki were always "it," and to be spied meant death for the Hun. From building to building they moved steadily forward until they came within range of the village church, when their progress was stayed for some time.

There was a cross on the roof of the church of some kind of stone with a red tinge. Behind it the Germans had planted guns. Three guns were hidden in the belfry, from which the bells had been removed and sent to Germany. Gothic walls and balconies, from which in happier days the plaster statuettes of saints looked down on the fair, green fields and peaceful countryside of France, sheltered machine gunners, snipers and small cannon.

Sharpshooters of the 110th finally picked off the gunners behind the cross, but the little fortress in the belfry still held out. Detachments set out to work around the outer edge of the town and surround the church. When they found houses with part.i.tion walls so strong that a hole could not be battered through easily, sharpshooters were stationed at the windows and doors and they were able to hold the German fire down so well that other men could slip to the shelter of the next house.

This was all right until they came to the roads that radiated from the church to the four corners of the village. They were not wide roads, but the terrific fire that swept down them at every sign of a movement by the Americans made the prospect of crossing them seem like a first cla.s.s suicide. Nevertheless, it had to be done. The men who led this circuitous advance waited until enough of their comrades had arrived to make a sortie in force. The best riflemen were told off to remain behind in the houses and to mark down the peepholes and other places from which the fire was coming. Automatic riflemen and rifle grenadiers were a.s.signed to look after the Huns secreted in the church.

When these arrangements were completed, the Americans began a fire that reduced the German effort to a minimum. Our marksmen did not wait for a German to show himself. They kept a steady stream of lead and steel pouring into every place from which German shots had been seen to come.

Under cover of this sweeping hail, the men who were to continue the advance darted across the road, right in the open. They made no effort to fire, but put every ounce of energy into the speed of their legs.

Thus a footing was established by a considerable group on the other side of the road, and the remaining houses between there and the church soon were cleaned up, so that reinforcements could move forward.

Still the church remained the dominating figure of the fight, as it had been of the village landscape so many years. Its stout stone walls, built to last for centuries, offered ideal shelter, and before anything further could be done it became imperative to wipe out that nest of snarling Hun fire.

Using the same tactics as had availed them so well in the crossing of the road, a little band of Americans was enabled to cross the small open s.p.a.ce at the rear of the church. Here a sh.e.l.l from a German battery had conveniently opened a hole in the solid masonry. It was the work of only a few minutes to enlarge this, and our men began to filter into the once sacred edifice, now so profaned by the sacrilegious Hun.

The bottom of the church was turned quickly into a charnel house for the Boche there, and then our men were free to turn their attention to that annoying steeple, which still was taking its toll. One man led the way up the winding stone stairs, fighting every step. Strange to relate, he went safely to the top, although comrades behind him were struck down, and he faced a torrent of fire and even missiles hurled down by the frantic Huns who sought to stay this implacable advance.

Eventually the top of the stairs was gained. A German under officer, who evidently had been in command of the stronghold, leaped over the low parapet to death, and three Huns, the last of the garrison, abjectly waved their arms in the air and squalled the customary "Kamerad!

Kamerad!"

Mopping up of the rest of the town was an easy task by comparison with what had gone before. Then, with only a brief breathing spell, the regiment swung a little to the northwest and reached Courmont in time to join the 109th in wiping out the last machine gunners there.

Now came an achievement of which survivors of the 109th and 110th Infantry Regiments--the Fifty-fifth Infantry Brigade--will retain the memory for years to come. It was one of those feats that become regimental traditions, the tales of which are handed down for generations within regimental organizations and in later years become established as standards toward which future members of the organization may aspire with only small likelihood of attaining.

This achievement was the taking of the Bois de Grimpettes, or Grimpettes Wood.